


Too Much Blues

by Morpheus626



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:33:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25062439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morpheus626/pseuds/Morpheus626
Summary: Gotta be honest, no idea what this is. I wanted to write, I put on some music and did some jumping around Spotify, and now here this is. I’ve been writing for like three hours and it somehow got dark around me, idk when that happened.Not sure if this really qualifies as angst? It isn’t happy, but it isn’t like overwhelmingly sad for Eugene or Snafu either. Y’all will have to let me know I guess.
Relationships: Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge
Kudos: 2





	Too Much Blues

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the song by James Booker which I have linked there on his name because I recently discovered him, and he is absolutely wonderful, and deserves more people listening to his music. After you read this, give him a listen. He’s Freddie levels of amazing piano playing, and sings so strongly it transports you. I can’t believe I didn’t know of him until now, and I wish I had sooner.

The taste of blood on his tongue wasn’t unfamiliar, but it was unwelcome. 

The alley he was laying in wasn’t cold, thanks to the August heat, but it was wet. Rain poured, sluicing off of the rooftops as fast as it could fall from the clouds. 

He wouldn’t admit that this had been a bad idea though. Not yet. It would have to get a lot worse for that. 

Eugene had thought it was a bad idea from the start. 

“You can’t win the money we need by gambling. The math doesn’t pan out-” 

“I’m lucky,” Snafu had told him, accompanying it with a kiss. “I can win us a thousand dollars, easy. Give me the weekend in New Orleans, let me hit up the old haunts, and I’ll have it. I promise.” 

“At least let me go with you,” Eugene had begged as he had watched him pack. “For safety’s sake.” 

“I used to live there, Gene. The city isn’t any more unsafe than anywhere else anyway. Besides what else are we gonna do?” 

Eugene hadn’t had an answer for that, and neither did Snafu for that matter. It was purely bad luck and bad timing, that two of the cats had needed the vet, that Eugene had busted his arm trying to help repair part of the roof after a particularly bad hailstorm fucked it all the way up, that another storm had hit after that and done such damage that they had to hire someone to come fix it up instead of trying to do it themselves, that the break in Eugene’s arm wasn’t healing well and required more visits to the doctor than previously expected. 

The first thousand they’d raised by selling off things from the house, one by one, first to the pawn shop in town, then by driving out of town to the pawn shops of neighboring towns until they had enough. Their house was slightly more bare (and missing some furniture) but it was worth it. Neither of them wanted to beg help from Eugene’s parents, or Sid and Mary. Not their debts, not their problem, was the agreed upon mantra. 

But the pawn shops didn’t want any more of their things, and to pay off the thousand now would drain their accounts. 

And Snafu had always enjoyed gambling. 

It wasn’t that he hadn’t anticipated this. You could get jumped in any city in the country, for any reason, he figured. 

This time, however, he wasn’t sure what the reason was. He’d lost more than he’d won, and the few hundred he had on him was still all present and accounted for. They’d beaten him to a pulp, and run, and that was that.

“Just bad luck,” he mumbled as he stood and staggered out of the alley. 

People traipsed past him without a care, some drunk, others just deep in conversation with those they walked beside, or taking in the scenery. The city had never chewed them up and spat them back out like it had him. Maybe other cities had, and this was their safe place. 

It had been his, once. And he wanted to believe it still was. 

But it was difficult, bloody and bruised, the rain seemingly never-ending as he finally dropped to the curb and sat. And he was tired. It had been hours finding any game he could, in any place he could, trying to win as much as possible. No booze like he might have had normally, this was too important not to stay sharp. 

But even that hadn’t done it. It was nearly Sunday morning, and Eugene would be expecting him back by Sunday night. It didn’t seem enough time, not nearly enough time. 

“You need a rest,” the man who had stopped in front of him said it not as a question, but as a fact. He wore a sharp suit, and looked just as tired as Snafu. 

“Don’t we all?” 

The man nodded. “I know a restful place.” 

He let the man help him up, and tried not to slow him as they made their way down the road to the nearest bar. 

“Needs some cleaning up,” the man said to the bartender, who nodded and came out from behind the bar with a rag and a small first aid kit. 

“I can pay you,” Snafu said, even though it hurt to say. Any money gone was less to bring home to Eugene, and he already could barely bear how little he would be bringing. 

“Nah,” the man replied. “How about a story instead?” 

“What about?” 

“Anything,” the man replied, watching as the bartender cleaned the cuts on Snafu’s face. “Lotta rings on them, hm?” 

Snafu winced at the antiseptic, and nodded. “What little I got to see of them before…well.” 

“Got everything you had before they took you down?” 

“Yeah,” Snafu replied. “Thankfully.” 

“How long you been away?” 

Snafu sighed. “Too long, maybe. I live in Alabama now, with my hu-” 

It came so naturally to say back at home, where he knew he was mostly safe, but he bit his tongue now, and held his breath as he watched the man’s reaction. 

“Your husband,” the man finished. “Okay. And you came back to town because…” 

“We need money,” Snafu admitted. “I was gonna win it for us. Some cards, whatever else I could find, you know.” 

“Just see what’s going on for the night, what you start winning at,” the man agreed. “You win all you need?” 

Snafu scoffed, and nodded his thanks to the bartender as he finished up. “I wish. Six hundred and some I got, but I need a thousand. I’ve got the rest of tonight, and most of tomorrow to get the last four hundred.” 

“Son,” the man said. “It’s already four in the morning on Sunday. How much luck you think you’re gonna find before you have to head home?” 

“Not enough,” Snafu muttered. “I can’t go back to him with just this.” 

The man nodded. “How well can you play?” 

“Play what?”

“Piano. I can tell by your hands, those fingers.” 

Snafu shrugged. He had been given lessons as a child, but hadn’t made much effort to keep up with them the older he got. And war didn’t exactly lend itself well to piano practice, what with no drops of pianos on the islands in the Pacific. 

“I’ve got to run and play at church myself,” the man said. “But my grandmother is at home, too sick in bed to go. She wants nothing more than to hear some of the music I’d be playing. If you can do even a song or two, it would mean the world. And I’ll give you that last four hundred.” 

He smirked. “Four hundred dollars to play piano for someone I don’t know? Pull the other one.” 

“Not at all,” the man said. “I give you my word, and my name.” 

“Your name?” 

“Names are power,” the man replied. “Call me Jim. You?” 

“Snafu.” 

Jim grinned. “That ain’t your real name, but Jim ain’t my real name either, so fair enough. Come on then, and I’ll take you to her. Play for the next few hours, and the money is yours.” 

Jim led out of the bar with only a wave to the bartender, who seemed nonplussed by all of it, and called them a cab. It drove them from the Quarter to Metairie quickly, to a small white house with blue trim. 

Jim didn’t introduce him to the elderly woman who was tucked into the small twin bed in the living room, only said a few words to her, and gestured Snafu to the piano near it, then left. 

He settled onto the bench, and let his fingers rest uncertainly on the keys. 

“Can you play me something about losing?” the woman’s voice was soft, but scratched with the effort of being brought forth. 

“I know about losing,” Snafu murmured, and patted the wad of bills in his pocket before starting in on St. Jame’s Infirmary Blues. It was one of the few songs he could remember well, though it certainly didn’t fit the bill of a ‘church song.’ “Though you wanted something from your church though? That’s what Jim told me.” 

“Jim? Is that what he’s having you call him? Well, he is a sweetheart, but he doesn’t need to know what I have you play,” the woman replied. “I like this one.” 

It wasn’t a particularly long song, but he let his fingers play on the keys, adding into it, until she hummed discontentedly. 

“What else do you know?” 

“More blues?” Snafu winced. “Mostly remember what folks around here play, what I heard before I left, what I heard now walkin’ the streets. Think I could replicate some of it-” 

“Don’t talk it over till it falls apart,” the woman interrupted gently. “Just play. I trust you.” 

He searched his mind for the chords, the melodies, letting them fall into place, then playing about with them. He didn’t worry about perfectly matching what he could recall in his head; she hummed happily each time he did his own variations. 

There was a clock on the wall, but he paid it no mind, until Jim came back inside. 

He motioned for Snafu to continue playing, then stepped up to the bed, kneeling down to the woman. 

“Thank you,” he said softly. “She’s smiling. How she always wanted to go.” 

Snafu stopped short, and nearly tripped running out from behind the piano. “Is she-” 

“She kept telling us it would be today, and she’s not often wrong about anything,” Jim chuckled. “Thank you for your kindness, and your help. If I couldn’t be here, I’m glad you could be.” 

“You don’t know me,” Snafu couldn’t help but murmur. 

“You’re a son of the city, and I bet you had a grandmother sweet as mine that you once played for.” 

“Something like that,” Snafu said, and pushed the memories back down. 

“That’s enough. Don’t need to know everything about someone to be kind to them, to do the most basic human act of creating something to make them happy, to ease them in a time of suffering. And I knew you could and would do that for her.” 

Jim handed him a bundle of bills. “Count it if you like; I don’t blame you if you do. But it’s all there. Four hundred, plus an extra hundred in case you run into trouble on the way home.” 

Snafu took the bundle with shaking hands. “Thank you. Is there…” 

“You’ve done everything we needed you to,” Jim interrupted, a soft and sad smile on his face. “You get home to your husband, and take care of your debts. Be well. Maybe we’ll find each other again, should you come back. Bring your husband this time, and we’ll all share a drink.” 

“You sound so certain that I’ll be back,” Snafu said. 

“Because you will be,” Jim said matter-of-factly. “A visit to one home, from another. Because the city is always home to you, even if you forget that once you go. But places never forget the children that grew up in their streets. Their pain and their happiness and their sadness. She’ll remember this particular sadness, and the pain you met here this time. And be ready to comfort you to make up for it, the next time you come home.” 

He left the house, and found a cab waiting for him outside. The ride to the train station was a bit longer than the ride to the house had been, and he considered using it to count the bills Jim had given him. 

But he didn’t. Somehow, in his gut, he knew there was no need. 

He didn’t on the train ride back either. Instead, he slept, the most he had slept since getting to New Orleans. 

At the station, he called Eugene. 

“I’ve got enough. More than enough.” 

He hung up before Eugene could ask any questions, and settled onto a bench outside the station to wait for him. 

The taste of blood on his tongue, as he chewed at his lower lip anxiously, was not unfamiliar, or unwelcome. 

The iron tasted like life, whatever remained of his, of Eugene’s. 

He wondered if there would be music at the end, for them.


End file.
